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Japan's Kokusai drops Italian, Spanish, Belgian bonds

Kokusai Asset Management has removed bonds of Italy, Spain and Belgium from its $25 billion fund, Japan's top mutual fund.

This is due to deepening uncertainty over the euro-zone's sovereign debt crisis.

Kokusai Asset's Global Sovereign fund, its flagship fund also known as "Glosov" among Japanese investors, removed the three countries from its portfolio after cutting weightings of French bonds to zero in October from 1.7 percent in September.

The fund's weighting in euro-denominated bonds totalled 15.9 percent as of Nov. 24, down from more than 30 percent in September.

The latest action left only three euro-zone countries in its portfolio, with a holding of 10.7 percent in German bonds, 3.5 percent in Dutch bonds and 1.8 percent in Finnish bonds.

Kokusai said in a report earlier this month that it was making a strategy to shift its portfolio to Canada, Australia, Sweden and Norway, whose currencies are relatively strong.

The asset manager also raised its allocation to Japan as a temporary safe-haven measure.